By MARK FAINARU-WADA AND LANCE WILLIAMS, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Updated 10:00 pm, Wednesday, December 24, 2003

Barry Bonds hit a career-high 49 home runs during the 2000 season, but within days of the last game, he set his sights on 2001.

Bonds already was doing weight training with Greg Anderson, his boyhood friend. Anderson took him to see Victor Conte, a self-taught scientist who boasted he could propel top-level athletes to peak performance through an unconventional mix of blood analysis and nutritional supplements.

The outfielder returned the next season bigger and stronger. The results are etched in baseball's record books -- and, perhaps, in a transcript of the secret proceedings of a federal grand jury convened in San Francisco this fall.

For while Bonds' alliance with the weight trainer and the nutritionist may have helped him hit 73 home runs in 2001, it also involved him in what may become sports' worst doping scandal.

Already the scandal has roiled both the upcoming 2004 Olympic Games in Athens and U.S. professional sports, calling into question whether some of the world's greatest athletic achievements have been attained by deliberate cheating.

At the center of the scandal are Conte and Anderson -- targets of the federal grand jury investigation -- as well as some of the biggest names in the National Football League, Major League Baseball and track and field, who have been summoned to testify. But the biggest name of all is Bonds, who after an off-season with Conte and Anderson emerged, according to the team media guide, 18 pounds heavier, solid as a rock -- and a better hitter than he had been in his entire life.

The 39-year-old Bonds has denied using performance-enhancing drugs and attributed his bulk and success to nutrition and weight training. But his relationship with Conte and Anderson has underscored speculation that his late-career assault on the home run record was steroid-fueled.

Building a business

Conte was an odd mixture of sports guru and sports fan. His Burlingame Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) sold sophisticated blood- and urine-testing services to athletes, and a subsidiary offered an array of supplements, including the popular zinc and magnesium product, ZMA.

Making a go of it in the fiercely competitive nutritional supplements business wasn't easy, but Conte was charismatic and a master networker.

In 1988, Conte provided free testing and supplements for a group he called "BALCO Olympians," then joined them at the Summer Games in Seoul.

In 1996, Conte began working with linebacker Bill Romanowski, through whom Conte generated business with more pro football players. Romanowski also steered athletes from other sports to Conte, including Remi Korchemny, a Russian-born sprint coach who has coached three Olympic medalists.

Conte and Korchemny eventually formed the ZMA Track Club, which served as a marketing tool and claimed among its athletes Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery, the U.S. sprinters who at one time were the fastest man and woman in the world.

As big as those clients were, Bonds' arrival in 2000 signaled even greater opportunities.

Anderson, Conte meet

Conte ran his business in Burlingame, Calif., just around the corner from the gym where Greg Anderson worked out Bonds.

Through his Get Big Productions business, Anderson began working with Bonds in about 1998. His business opportunities soared when Bonds introduced Anderson to other big-name ballplayers.

After Anderson introduced Bonds to Conte, the slugger began a year-round training and supplement plan. He told Muscle & Fitness magazine he visited BALCO every few months to have his blood tested for deficiencies, and Conte said Bonds' nutrition regimen included a long list of items taken at different points of the day, including three capsules of ZMA before bedtime.

73 home runs

When Bonds entered the league in 1986, he was a wiry phenom listed at 6-foot-1, 185 pounds. In the 2001 season, he was 6-2 and pushing 230 -- a linebacker in a baseball uniform.

On Oct. 5, 2001, Bonds broke the season home run record set just three years earlier by Mark McGwire. Speaking that night at Pac Bell Park, the Giants slugger thanked several people, including Anderson. Bonds finished the season with 73 home runs.

When McGwire broke the home run record that had stood for nearly 40 years, there were news reports about his use of androstenedione (Andro), an over-the-counter supplement that acted like a steroid and was banned in some sports.

By the start of the 2002 season, there were growing questions about what Bonds might be doing to enhance his performance.

New drug is detected

On Aug. 31, 2002, Olympic cyclist Tammy Thomas was banned from her sport. A steroid used in a few clinical studies three decades earlier -- norbolethone -- had been found in her urine samples.

Its discovery prompted an investigation not only by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), but also by federal authorities. Norbolethone had never been marketed for public use, which made it helpful to athletes seeking an undetectable edge.

The scientist who uncovered the mystery drug was Dr. Don Catlin, who runs the Olympic drug-testing lab at UCLA.

Officials at the doping agency told the Washington Post they believed the norbolethone was connected to Patrick Arnold, an Illinois chemist most famous for bringing Andro to the U.S. market. Arnold was never charged with wrongdoing, though, and he denied a link between himself and Thomas.

He did have a link to Victor Conte. The two were online acquaintances, Internet postings show.

In June 2003, USADA received an anonymous phone call from a man who said he was a "high-profile track and field coach." He named athletes he believed were using an undetectable steroid, cited Conte as the source of the drug and offered as evidence a used syringe with the substance in it.

Catlin performed what was described as "reverse engineering" on the substance in the syringe, and he had himself another hit.

The new drug, which Catlin named tetrahydrogestrinone, or THG, was closely related to the steroids gestrinone and trenbolone, but it was altered slightly to avoid detection. Catlin created a test to detect the drug.

Hundreds of urine samples from athletes inside and outside track and field were retested, and the agency also sent word about THG to international sports agencies and U.S. professional leagues. So far, five track and field competitors and four Oakland Raiders, including Romanowski, reportedly have tested positive for the drug.

On Sept. 3, officials from agencies representing the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the San Mateo Narcotics Task Force and USADA raided BALCO. They knew going in what they were looking for: illegal performance-enhancing drugs, including THG. They thought they knew the name of the chemist who had created this new drug: Patrick Arnold. And they thought they knew two men who were getting paid to supply it to elite athletes: Conte and Anderson.

A month-and-a-half later, the anti-doping agency announced a major doping scandal. Terry Madden, head of the organization, told of the anonymous tipster and the designer steroid, and he named Conte and BALCO as the source of the drug.

In e-mails to the San Francisco Chronicle, Conte denied being the source of THG, questioned whether it was a banned substance and said he was the victim of jealous track and field coaches.

Parade of athletes

Names of athletes who tested positive for THG leaked out. When it was reported that British sprinter Dwain Chambers -- Europe's fastest man -- was among them, it was a huge story in Europe.

In San Francisco, some of the world's greatest athletes began appearing before the grand jury in the Phillip A. Burton Federal Building.

If the investigation proceeds to criminal prosecution, the testimony of the sports stars could become public. Some could find themselves testifying about drug use in open court.

Athletes and the nations they represent could pay a price in the Olympics in Athens next August.

But baseball is where the scandal may cut deepest in the United States. Baseball will begin enforcing its much-criticized steroid policy next season, but the fans will impose their own judgment.

"I think the public will put its own asterisk (on all the records), even if baseball doesn't," said former baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent. "I think the sadness for McGwire ... and maybe even Bonds is that people will not look at them the way they did before all these drug allegations.

"I think it's bad all the way around. Nobody comes out a plus in all this."